Famous Affinities of History — Volume 1 eBook

The letters of Heloise have been read and imitated
throughout the whole of the last nine centuries.
Some have found in them the utterances of a woman
whose love of love was greater than her love of God
and whose intensity of passion nothing could subdue;
and so these have condemned her. But others,
like Chateaubriand, have more truly seen in them a
pure and noble spirit to whom fate had been very cruel;
and who was, after all, writing to the man who had
been her lawful husband.

Some of the most famous imitations of her letters
are those in the ancient poem entitled, “The
Romance of the Rose,” written by Jean de Meung,
in the thirteenth century; and in modern times her
first letter was paraphrased by Alexander Pope, and
in French by Colardeau. There exist in English
half a dozen translations of them, with Abelard’s
replies. It is interesting to remember that practically
all the other writings of Abelard remained unpublished
and unedited until a very recent period. He was
a remarkable figure as a philosopher and scholar;
but the world cares for him only because he was loved
by Heloise.

QUEEN ELIZABETH AND THE EARL OF LEICESTER

History has many romantic stories to tell of the part
which women have played in determining the destinies
of nations. Sometimes it is a woman’s beauty
that causes the shifting of a province. Again
it is another woman’s rich possessions that incite
invasion and lead to bloody wars. Marriages or
dowries, or the refusal of marriages and the lack
of dowries, inheritance through an heiress, the failure
of a male succession—­in these and in many
other ways women have set their mark indelibly upon
the trend of history.

However, if we look over these different events we
shall find that it is not so much the mere longing
for a woman—­the desire to have her as a
queen—­that has seriously affected the annals
of any nation. Kings, like ordinary men, have
paid their suit and then have ridden away repulsed,
yet not seriously dejected. Most royal marriages
are made either to secure the succession to a throne
by a legitimate line of heirs or else to unite adjoining
states and make a powerful kingdom out of two that
are less powerful. But, as a rule, kings have
found greater delight in some sheltered bower remote
from courts than in the castled halls and well-cared-for
nooks where their own wives and children have been
reared with all the appurtenances of legitimacy.

There are not many stories that hang persistently
about the love-making of a single woman. In
the case of one or another we may find an episode
or two—­something dashing, something spirited
or striking, something brilliant and exhilarating,
or something sad. But for a woman’s whole
life to be spent in courtship that meant nothing and
that was only a clever aid to diplomacy—­this
is surely an unusual and really wonderful thing.

It is the more unusual because the woman herself was
not intended by nature to be wasted upon the cold
and cheerless sport of chancellors and counselors
and men who had no thought of her except to use her
as a pawn. She was hot-blooded, descended from
a fiery race, and one whose temper was quick to leap
into the passion of a man.